Can the little red dot stand shoulder to shoulder with the little black dress? A native islander and friends look at fashion (and such) in Singapore, and, occasionally, among her neighbours, and a little further afield

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Japanese Flair For An American Boot

The Timberland wheat-coloured boot is one of those classic shoes with work wear reliability that continues to appeal to guys. It is not, by default, a fashionable boot, but by intermittent cosmic intervention of recent years, it has become somewhat cool, especially among those fellows who like to be shod in chunky footwear such as boots by Red Wing Shoes. Or by sartorially savvy individuals who wear the pink instead of the characteristic wheat version as a cheeky challenge to conventional ideas of what makes for manly shoes.

But perhaps that’s going to change with Japanese brand Beauty & Youth giving the forty-plus-year-old Timberland 6-Inch Premium a touch of modern Nippon accents. By association alone, this reiteration may draw the attention of hipsters. Beauty & Youth is part of United Arrows, a Japanese chain store that imbues just enough details and quirks into everything they do, no matter how classic the merchandise, so as to stay on the right side of cool, and enough to keep them straddling comfortably between the traditional and the forward. This is best exemplified in their Harajuku store, one of Tokyo’s most alluring multi-label emporiums. It’s really a Japanese thing, an obsession, and only the Japanese tweak heritage this well. You’ll see it in this Timberland 6-Inch Premium.

This isn’t Timberland’s first collaboration with Beauty & Youth. Back in the summer of 2009, both brands came up with an all-black boat shoe (with Timberland’s signature orange lining). For the present, the Timberland marketing machinery has been able to seduce the media into calling this new 6-Inch Premium a “special edition”. So how special is it? In this collaboration, the makeover is kept very subtle, unlike, say, Riccardo Tisci and Nike’s bombastic Air Force 1. The wheat-coloured nubuck upper is there, the seam-sealed waterproof construction too, so is the anti-fatigue footbed (which makes this ideal for long walks) and the rubber lug outsole. Here are the Beauty & Youth subtleties: a navy nubuck (instead of dark brown leather) padded collar, tonal (instead of contrast) stitching, golden round (instead of silver octagonal) eyelets, and monotone (instead of two-tone) laces.

In our hands, the boots are heavy, look authentic and feel sturdy, not over-reaching the “premium” tag. They are also still evocative of mountain hikes, barnyard amble, and feet in piles of leaves that have outlived their usefulness on branches. And, for purists, they are totally Timberland.